Home monitoring system boosts victim and community safety

by Ronnie Garrett On Jul 15, 2007

The assailant lurked in the shadows outside the Edenton, North Carolina,
bingo hall for hours. When Sharlene Freeman strolled unsuspectingly to her car
in the late evening hours, the killer was ready for her. He shot and killed her,
then fled. A manhunt ensued, and to date the suspect remains at large.

The murderer, James Earl Freeman, was the victim's estranged husband — and
she had a restraining order against him.

Sharlene Freeman's death is hardly an anomaly. Statistics bear out that
people violate restraining orders every day.

A restraining order represents just part of the total solution to this
age-old problem, says Steve Aninye, president and CEO of Alpharetta,
Georgia-based Omnilink Systems Inc. Fortunately, Aninye's company offers an
answer. Omnilink's wireless tracking device not only aids law enforcement
agencies monitoring offenders on house arrest or probation, it also provides a
victim safety measure. While trailing an offender, the device also tracks the
victim's cell phone to alert when an offender comes too close. If a restraining
order is violated, the device notifies the victim and police simultaneously,
expediting the dispatch of law enforcement to the scene and giving the victim
time to seek safety.

"It empowers victims to become active participants in ensuring their own
safety," Aninye explains. "When bad people come within proximity, we are able to
alert victims so they can run and seek security until police arrive."

A New York City battered women's shelter has already developed a program to
protect victims in this way. If a judge orders a batterer to wear the Omnilink
system and the victim opts in with her cell phone, Omnilink is ready. Should the
offender close in, the system will detect it and notify police. Had Sharlene
Freeman participated in such a program, she would have known her estranged
husband lied in wait for her outside. She likely would have sought shelter until
police arrived to make an arrest — and she might still be alive today.

"Not all scenarios lead to an arrest, and it's conceivable that both are in
the same place at the same time," Aninye says. "But the system minimizes
surprises."

"It's amazing the level of protection we have for the community on the people
we track," says Sgt. Darrick Butler of the Las Vegas (Nevada) Police Department.
He says the device's mobile exclusion zones give his department unprecedented
control over the 237 offenders it currently tracks.

"If an offender has a violent offense against a specific person, we can make
that person a mobile exclusion zone via their cell phone," he explains. "So if
the offender comes within 100 or 1,000 feet of that cell phone — whatever we set
the zone at — it sends a signal to us and to the victim."

But beyond that, the Omnilink device, which the Las Vegas PD has deployed
since November 2006, allows the agency to keep child offenders away from kids.
"With a click of a button we can set all schools, parks, daycare centers, etc.
as exclusion zones, and if they come within a certain space of those, we get a
signal," he says.

From many to one

Overcrowded jails and high incarceration costs have driven the judicial
system to seek alternative sanction programs that allow offenders to live and
work in the community while they serve their sentences. Depending on the
offender's behavioral history and the offense committed, these house arrestees
may be subject to varying levels of monitoring, including:

Curfew: The offender must remain on lockdown at home between
specific hours, for instance 7 p.m. to 7 a.m.

Passive: Besides being on lockdown during a set timeframe, the
judge also restricts the places an offender may go. For instance, a pedophile
might not be permitted near places where children are present; a batterer may
be forbidden within so many feet of his spouse's home; and a drug addict might
not be allowed in areas where drugs are known to be sold.

Active: In this situation, authorities must be able to track the
offender at all times.

With traditional GPS or RF-based systems, multiple devices are employed to
vary monitoring intensity. For instance, these systems typically require
offenders to don an ankle bracelet then place it into a home unit when coming or
going to ensure curfew restrictions are followed. In passive monitoring cases,
traditional systems require offenders to wear a personal tracking unit (PTU) in
addition to an ankle bracelet when leaving the home. When the offender returns
home, the PTU is plugged into a docking station then follows instructions to
submit his location history via landline phone. The offender must carry yet
another device, a transmitter, to accomplish active monitoring. This transmitter
picks up location data from the PTU and transfers the information every couple
hours over a cellular network.

Omnilink's system accomplishes these monitoring intensities with a single,
5.3-ounce ankle bracelet, equipped with a rechargeable battery that lasts up to
3 days in intensive supervision and up to 21 days in low-usage scenarios. "We
have a true single-unit device that you can move through different levels of
monitoring without the offender knowing it," Aninye says.

A single, sealed system also cuts down on maintenance, says Butler, who notes
the agency's previous RF systems were not sealed. "When we'd get them back, the
turnaround time would be days because we had to put them into a fumigation
chamber," he says. "We essentially had to 'bug bomb' them." Las Vegas officers
simply put the Omnilink system into a dishwasher, supplied by the company, to
clean the bracelets.

"There really is no maintenance involved," he says. The department keeps
devices charging at all times, so they go out fully charged. The old units
required officers to cut the straps to remove them and then replace the straps.
The Omnilink system has two pins that pop out to remove the device and pop back
in for reuse.

Monitoring offenders wherever they are

Urban canyons and bodies of water have traditionally presented barriers to
GPS and RF offender tracking systems. But Omnilink's device utilizes a precision
engine that allows it to locate and track offenders in most impaired
environments, including tunnels, armored vehicles, subways, and in and around
buildings or water. "Unlike pure GPS systems, our system uses wireless networks
to augment the GPS," says Aninye. In short, the system relies on GPS tracking
when it's available, but when it's not it, tracks offenders via cellular
networks.

Unlike most GPS devices that require line-of-site to satellites circling
above, Omnilink trails offenders with or without GPS line-of-site. In fact,
Omnilink systems have traced offenders in New York City subways and Las Vegas
casinos. This is a boon to law enforcement, especially in Vegas, where Aninye
says "the way the hotels are connected, other systems lose site of an offender —
the offender went in one end and couldn't be tracked anymore until he came out.
With our solution, we know where the offender is every single minute."

While GPS and RF-based systems are prone to error, Omnilink's cellular and
GPS capabilities counterbalance each other for greater location accuracy. When
line-of-site is available, the system relies on GPS first then corrects any
deviations through the cellular network. With the wireless tracking, the system
recalculates location as soon as line-of-site becomes available to ensure the
location is accurate to within 12 to 50 feet.

Butler describes the system's accuracy with the following story. Officers
recently found one of their tracked offenders was a runner, meaning he wasn't
where he was supposed to be and officers were unable to make contact. Officers
kept tabs on this offender throughout the city of 2-million residents and caught
up with him at a relative's home. "Before, all we knew was if they were at home
or away from home," Butler says of the agency's previous landline-based RF
system. "Once they were away from home, we had no idea where they were."

Pinpoint location software

The Omnilink Focalpoint software used within the device is based on a
management-by-exception architecture, which means officers no longer need to
watch dots on a map to figure out what offenders are doing. Instead officers
define supervision rules, specify offender schedules and establish specific
alert criteria on an offender-by-offender basis. They can then receive alerts
via fax, e-mail, pager, text message or telephone call whenever an offender
violates these predetermined conditions.

This Internet-based, SSL tracking tool allows agencies to set the amount of
access each employee has to offender records. Three roles are available out of
the box: county administrator, supervisor and probation officers. But
administrators can adjust this as they see fit — Omnilink provides them with
templates to do so. The system works with ESRI's mapping applications as well as
Google Maps and Microsoft mapping engines. It can be configured to the agency's
preferred mapping software.

Butler says he appreciates that the system is a Web-based application.
"Officers have laptops in their cars so they can watch the person on-screen and
follow them around town," he explains. This tracking ability has even enabled
the Las Vegas PD to recover devices offenders toss into Dumpsters. "Officers
have caught up to the garbage truck and stopped it. They've even followed it all
the way to the landfill," he says.

Federal law dictates offenders are able to remove battery-powered tracking
systems in an emergency, meaning offenders can take off the device to avoid
detection. To counteract this, Omnilink configures its system to detect when
offenders tamper with the bracelet. "If offenders tinker with it by cutting it
or tweaking it in any way, an officer is notified automatically," Aninye
explains. "There are multiple levels of tamper protection built in."

Tampering is reduced when compared to other devices on the market, Butler
adds. The system's 2.5-inch band is thicker than previous systems and
waterproof, making it very stable; previous systems had bands that could be
stretched and slipped off rather easily. "We get immediate alerts if there is
any kind of tamper," he says. "If they start pulling on it a little bit, we're
alerted before anything breaks. There really isn't much they can do to tamper
with them that won't cause an alarm."

The only problem Butler recalls has been with the system's charger, which was
very delicate in the past. "The company recently altered the charger design and
changed manufacturers to satisfactorily address the problem. "Everything we have
issues with, Omnilink works very hard to fix," he says. "Their responsiveness is
the biggest thing."

This technology allows monitoring officers to focus on managing offenders as
opposed to managing technology. The Omnilink system brings an unprecedented
level of control, allowing agencies to enforce offender accountability and
compliance, and boost public safety not only for their victims but for the
community as a whole.